[MayDay]

The "success" of Tower City Center is really relative and I think everyone needs to consider the center's context.

When Tower City Center first opened in 1991 (correct me if I'm wrong on the date), the roster of stores was as high-end as it gets. It was easily the most upscale cluster of stores between NYC and Chicago with stores and boutiques like Calvin Klein, Gucci, Fendi, Barneys, etc. Places where a simple T-shirt will run you well over $100USD. Places with flagship stores on Chicago's Michigan Avenue were setting up shop in Cleveland - a smaller market with a citywide poverty rate of around 30%. Tower City Center would NEVER achieve success with that approach unless the Cleveland area suddenly became the next economic "hot spot" and maintained that position for at least a decade.

The problem was that Cleveland has never really had a market for those stores. The region is large enough to have a large enough clientele to support ONE upscale retail area - unfortunately for Tower City, that area was established when Saks opened at Beachwood Place, 10 miles east of downtown. The people in Cleveland with money to blow tend to spend it infrequently, on much higher-end purchases - not dropping some cash for trivial shopping sprees. So to no surprise, all the ultra-pricey stores closed within 6 months of opening and were replaced with more approachable stores.

From what I've heard though - the management of Tower City hasn't adjusted the rental rates accordingly. Also, wherever you have issues of poverty, you have issues of crime and it's no secret to anyone that Tower City's incidents of shoplifting are higher than average. As Tower City also serves as the main downtown transit hub, the foot traffic brings in people of EVERY background and not everyone is comfortable with that. Couple that with some thinly veiled racism and the result is that Suzy SoccerMom from Solon (a far-flung 'burb) doesn't feel comfortable walking by a group of black people waiting for their bus. I say that because it's something I observed when I briefly worked at Tower City, not because it's something I agree with.

Anyways, with the majority of disposable incomes being spent in the 'burbs, everything downtown is suffering. Now, as the economy has been in the crapper - even the more moderate stores are feeling the pinch. In some cases, stores have closed because of issues with their respective parent companies. In others, it was because the Tower City locations were underperforming. For example, the Banana Republic store is scheduled to close at the end of this month - the store at Beachwood sold in ONE DAY what the Tower City store sold in a WEEK.